The present invention relates to a bottle unscrambler machine for use in handling small bottles or containers which would be fed to the machine in a bulk random configuration. The bottles can be made of plastic, metal, or glass so long as the material and configuration can withstand the forces involved in the unscrambling process.
In the past, some bottle orienting machines have been built in a horizontal plane with bottle aligning means and chutes for receiving the oriented bottles positioned approximately 180.degree. apart from each other. In these machines, the bottles would be circulated in a rotating hopper and would eventually align one behind the other. The bottles would then move to an elevating mechanism where the bottles would be shoved up an inclined plane by a pusher which would take the bottles to the bottle aligning device which included a tilted shelf high above the hopper from which the bottle would drop bottom down into a chute. Each chute was designed to carry two circumferentially spaced adjacent bottles. The bottles would then undergo either a single or a double drop to reach the exit conveyor. The number of drops was dependent on the position of the exit chute relative to the conveyor and to the distance the aligned bottles would travel in the machine before exiting. The longer the bottle could be stabilized, the less likely it was to fall during transfer to a conveyor belt. An example of this type of bottle aligning machine can be seen in U. S. Pat. No. 3,662,872 issued May 16, 1972, to Nalbach and U. S. Pat. No. 3,848,386 issued Apr. 6, 1976, to Nalbach.
In another example of a bottle unscrambler machine, the axis of rotation cf the machine was set at approximately 30.degree. relative to the horizontal with the bottles being dumped into the hopper at the low end and then being fed in a single row up the inner wall of the hopper to an exit station where the bottles would be dropped bottom down into exit chutes which would again cause the bottles to go through a double drop before being carried a sufficient distance within the machine to become stabilized so they could exit the machine without danger of toppling during transfer to the conveyor belt. A machine of the latter type is disclosed in U. S. Pat. No. 3,650,368 issued Mar. 21, 1972, to John C. Nalbach, the entire teaching of which patent is incorporated herein by reference.
According to the teaching of Nalbach 3,650,368, bulk plastic bottles are dumped into an inclined hopper which is caused to rotate by an electric motor equipped with suitable gear reduction means. The bottles are caused to circulate in the hopper and are scrambled by suitable mixing bars to prevent the bottles from blocking or bridging over the entrances to the bottle aligning chambers which are positioned in the hopper between the edge of the cone forming the bottom of the hopper and the interior edge of the hopper. The Nalbach machine is designed to carry one row of bottles about the internal periphery of the machine up to a point where the bottles can drop into any one of a plurality of chutes which are joined together to form a drum which is rotated by the same rotating means that rotate the hopper. The bottles drop to the bottom of each chute where they are supported by a shelf which carries the bottles less than 360.degree. around the interior of the shell of the machine At a point within the machine, the bottles drop individually into circumferentially spaced adjacent compartments where they are carried about the interior of the machine until they are brought to a tangential exit conveyor running at substantially the same speed as the speed of rotation of the unscrambler so that the bottles can be fed onto the conveyor without being destabilized. A machine of this type is capable of unscrambling, that is, aligning all of the bottles in a single direction and serially exiting the bottles from the machine at the rate of approximately 150 bottles per minute.